


push to your pull, parabola of will

by sugarybowl



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Hospitalization, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 02:24:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15184688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarybowl/pseuds/sugarybowl
Summary: The last and perhaps most pressing issue is that Arthur does not have a husband.





	push to your pull, parabola of will

Arthur has been called to the St. Vincent Regional Hospital on account of an accident his husband has been involved in. There are several issues at hand. For one, Arthur gets the call while he’s on the way back from a job well pulled in New Zealand and has no idea what region that particular St. Vincent is serving. Another issue is that the exact condition of his husband cannot be specified on the phone beyond stabilized. The last and perhaps most pressing issue is that Arthur does not have a husband.

It takes him only a few moments to figure out the location of the hospital and it’ll take him under four hours to get to Sydney from from Auckland on a chartered jet which he is already calling. He tries not to fuss during the flight, tries to keep busy preparing for the next job – an easy and legal affair in Belgium – and not thinking about how easily someone involved in an accident can become destabilized.

“Mr. Eames?”

“Yes,” he says without pause as the receptionist looks up at him, “my husband he was in an accident-“

“He’s under observation, I will grab a doctor for you to let you know more about his condition.”

The condition of his husband, Arthur soon learns, is stable as in not presently dying but precarious as in that could easily change. He is unconscious.

“May I see him please,” he asks, and wonders only briefly at how little he has to try to make himself sound frantic.

He has seen Eames sleep so many times the sight is almost comforting, though he knows the people watching him expect distress at the sight of the man he has apparently married all unconscious and punctured with tubes this way. He tries to give them what they want, falling to a crouch beside his bed and running the back of his hand over the side of his face that isn’t thoroughly cut and bruised.

“What happened,” he whispers, expecting Eames to answer him.

“We don’t have a lot of details, it was a fairly empty area and he was … must have run off the road,” the nurse sighs.

“How did you find me?” he asks, eyes still on Eames taking stock of the depth of his slumber. If they were working, Eames would be no more than two levels deep. The thought comforts him.

“We had to do a little detective work,” the nurse says from behind him, “we connected the tattoo with the information on his notebook.”

“Of course,” he answers, sifting through the tattoos he knows well enough in his mind – the Virgin and the Ovid and the game table on his thigh. He has no idea which of those could have made a path, or if Eames has collected more ink since Arthur last had a chance to see. Eames’s personal belongings are on the table beside the bed and Arthur’s hands clench with the urge to look through them, find that ever present notebook, decipher all the cogs and bits of Eames.

Eventually the nurse leaves him and Arthur moves from his carefully controlled pose to sit on the chair opposite the bed. He waits a couple of moments, just to make sure that the nurse isn’t coming back in, before he reaches over and dips his hand below the bedsheets, pinching the middle of the bottom of Eames’s foot.

“Fuck,” the man snaps, soft and gruff and obviously pained, “so rough while I’m so weak, darling.”

“You actually hurt?”

“I actually wrapped my car around a tree, pet. Does that impress you?”

Eames’s eyes started fluttering shut again so Arthur, without pause, pinched him.

“What.”

“What do you have on your body that people can find me with?”

Eames struggles with a slurred smile that looks like he’s more drunk the pleased, “Why don’t you nurse me back to health and find out?”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Go back to sleep, Mr. Eames.”

He leers, somehow able to through the haze of injury, “Come join me, Mr. Eames.”

“No.”

“Please? I’m on my deathbed darling.”

“You’re still intoxicated,” Arthur scoffs.

“Only you know I’m not. Come to bed darling,” he sighs, closing his eyes at last, “I’ll show you were I wrote your name on me.”

The words, the thought of it, warms up Arthur’s insides. For a moment he imagines a life where everything isn’t theater. Where he would have rights to the feelings he’s experience, from the dread to the fondness and the outright possessiveness of his name etched like an indelible mark on Eames’s skin. He walks up to Eames, the back of his hand retracing its steps over the unblemished side of Eames’s face, and lets himself believe – just for a moment. But Arthur does not have a husband.


End file.
